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1.3.1-Frauleindrosselmeyer
Archivist's note: This write-up was posted several months after the other commentary. Brick!Club 1.3 - these are mostly personal notes and jokes because I think I’m hilarious, I will copy+paste the Medical History stuff in a separate post for anyone who cares I learned loaaaads of obstetrics today so I allowed myself to read 1.3, so now I am only…30-something chapters behind? And OH MY GOSH this is an entertaining book ; the descriptions of what Our Day Out (Paris 1817 Edition) are like are awesome even if I don’t understand any of the historical references, and if my Kindle dictionaries continue to refuse to translate a considerable amount of vocabulary and also all the mythological names. Yet again I’m surprised by how evocative the description is. (Though not in the translation. I HATE the Hapgood translation. Maybe that is a natural consequence of reading an original and a translation side-by-side but it is like comparing madeleines with malt loaf. Beurk.) Anyway, this chapter contains: A bunch of historical references which I’m sure would be very evocative to anyone from that era but mean precisely bugger-all to me, plus the casually-dropped-in news that divorce became illegal (fun fact: this did actually happen in my old church, it’s a long story but let’s just say it was pretty fucking awful for anyone who had remarried and had to go back to their first spouses, just putting that out there), also Byron, also the lesson that tiny insignificant details are important which Hugo mentioned before, but I like this Butterfly Effect approach to history so this pleases me. Oscars, Arthurs, what on earth are you on about Hugo, I’m pretty sure Arthurs have existed since, y’know, Malory Things I Never Knew About My Own Country: "Favourite, so-called because she had been in England" "The butter is so rich that I ‘have the spleen’, as the English say." "A love affair is not made to crouch down and brutalize itself like an English serving-maid who has callouses on her knees from scrubbing” Plus of course that warning on toilet doors, because apparently in 1817 our inability to make sure there was no loo roll stuck to our shoe and our skirts weren’t stuck in our knickers was an international joke “En outre, il doutait sup/erieurement de toute chose, grande force aux yeux des faibles." - CYNICISM IS BAD U GUYS, EVEN THOUGH IT IMPRESSES DUMB PEOPLE (AND PRESUMABLY FANTINE) - honestly, let’s stitch this in a sampler, gosh I wish I’d read this before Cocksbridge uni "So, being ironic and bald, he was the chief. ‘Iron’ is an english word which means ‘iron.’ Is it from that that we get ‘irony’?" Hapgood is not helping me here - is there something about being a bald douchebag that denotes leadership? And does the sentence about irony mean anything? Did Hugo just wander off into a philosophical cul-de-sac, and his editor thought “Well, I let him stick the argot chapters in, why on earth would I cut one sentence on etymology?” Also, I just googled and it turns out that the answer to Hugo’s question is NO: ‘iron’ is from Old English, while ‘irony’ is from Greek. SOLVED. "Tholomyes lowered his voice, and told mysteriously of something so gay that a loud and enthusiastic snigger came from four mouths at once, and that Blachevelle cried ‘Now that’s an idea!’ They entered into a smoke-filled tavern, and the rest of their conversation was lost in shadow." Omg, there is a Fade To Black in novel form! Beautiful. I actually got excited about the surprise. "Favourite, Blachevelle’s girl, the twenty-three-year-old, the old one" YES THANK YOU HUGO, I REMEMBER HER, ALSO 23 IS NOT OLD Fantine being constantly described as virginal and pure, to the point of literally saying how she looks like a Vestal Virgin - except hahahaha no she’s not, she is a nice girl even though she is a FORNICATOR, top job Hugo for being pro-women and not blaming her for all the crap she is about to have for the rest of her life <3333333 Really terrible songs, it’s a wonder music ever took off as an art form Bombarda is a CHAIN RESTAURANT if my dictionary is to be believed, and it was a busy Sunday night so my head!canon is that Bombarda is the Wetherspoons of the Champs-Elysees, which is why Favourite was bitching about there being a bed in the room, Wetherspoons is shite "Sa blouse se drape en chlamyde" Apparently ‘chlamys’ is Greek for ‘mantle’ and chlamydia looks like a mantle, THE MORE YOU KNOW #medstudentnerding Tholomyes having fabulous trousers. I have heard stuff about the Amis and am guessing Hugo really thought trousers were the way to get girls. REALLY OBVIOUS CHAPTER TITLES c’mon Hugo really "He idolises me so much that one day when he was watching me make crepe batter, he said ‘Mamselle, if you made doughnuts from your gloves, I would eat them’. Only an artist could say something like that." and that is why I will die alone> "Bierre qui coule n’amasse point de mousse" I’m glad Hapgood also read this as “running beer gathers no froth,” except who wants froth when they could have beer, THAT IS A STUPID METAPHOR THOLOMYES. "A pun is the droppings of a spirit which flies." I’m guessing this is a reference to birds crapping before they take off? Which again is a ridiculous metaphor because birds crap to get rid of the dead weight, so unless he’s saying puns are a warm-up for genuine wit (and presumably he isn’t, because hello there, Hugolian list of famous people who made puns, including Jesus) I don’t quite think that was the best way to say “Puns are awesome!” Also, Hugo, I’m just saying, you could have picked someone other than the least reviled character in the whole book to tell your readers that puns are awesome. I mean, if people have read this far they’re probably on board anyway, but USE A CHARACTER WHO ISN’T HORRIBLE. Now I want an entire Mega Mis song about how awesome puns are? Possibly the intro to the Amis? THOLOMYES AS C.19 MRA: "a pretty woman is a casus belli; a pretty woman is flagrant misdemeanor" "to all those unfortunate men who are widowers, I throw the sublime proclamation of Bonaparte to the army of Italy: “Soldiers, you are in need of everything; the enemy has it.” “ Aspasia was a creature in whom two extremes of womanhood met; she was the goddess prostitute” Okay NOW I HATE HIM. ‘Waaaa, how dare they be pretty in front of me! I’m so nice but women are whores! Nice widowers finish last!’ Plus, he said something was Spanish when it was actually Latin, the cock. When he speaks Spanish. Twat. I want to write a Mega Mis Tholomyes/Fantine backstory song because of this excellent anon suggestion re: recycling of musical themes, but they don’t even taaaaalk to each other and he’s such a cunt, I may have to do some character analysis and take some serious artistic liberties to find out why on earth she would sleep with Fedoramyes A surprise! A surprise I was actually getting excited about because it was built up quite well but then ASDFJKL SUCK A BAG OF DICKS, BASTARD STUDENTS I am…not really liking Fantine? We are told she is smart, but apart from looking annoyingly into the middle distance I am not really feeling her great wise-osity, especially since she’s sleeping with a fedora-wearing horror ten years older than her. Also, she doesn’t seem a lot of fun, her social skills are nil, and I’m not sure why the other three are hanging out with her apart from their boyfriends all being BFFs. Getting the impression that she is better than the others merely because she is less ditzy and bubbly, which - screw you, Hugo, I don’t have a problem with her crappy choice of a boyfriend so how about you don’t put down the other girls for having some fun, eh? There is nothing to DISlike but then there is nothing to like, either. GIVE US SOME BACKSTORY ON WHY SHE IS SO WEIRD. In related news, FAVOURITE IS…MY FAVOURITE. SASSY. <333 Commentary Pilferingapples OH I WISH YOU HAD BEEN HERE WHEN WE WERE ALL ON THIS CHAPTER. Quick non-insightful comments, but What You Missed: Favourite has a bit of a fanclub, here. I suspect Era Dissonance, but dang. Favourite. She has been in fic, and I EAGERLY ENCOURAGE MORE. Fantine’s various oddities are likely due to her upbringing and lack thereof— who would have taught her social skills? There has been A LOT of typing about this, so I recommend catching up on the discussion; besides myself, I know Columbina and TheOnlyCheeseLeft have had some OPINIONS about the whole Fantine/Tholomyes/ learned behaviour thing, so maybe look through their tags (and so sorry to everyone I’m not mentioning, there’s at least one other person who was REALLY on this and I can’t recall the username? SHOUT OUT AND BE KNOWN). Frauleindrosselmeyer (reply to Pilferingapples) I am reading some of the meta! I read a few chapters and then I catch up with a few pages of your Brick!Club tag. It is beyond fascinating and I am in awe at this fandom’s collective knowledge. I am on page 18, now? One day I will catch up with you, I will run you off your feet, etc. Fantine/Tholomyes is a Thing I would like to figure out because that anon who suggested reworking Lovely Ladies/Turning/I Dreamed A Dream into a backstory song is a GENIUS and I want to try that. So I will read the Opinions, thank you! Especially since they do not actually talk in the novel, so I am struggling to see a relationship dynamic. How did they meet? Does she have daddy issues? Was she seduced by his having strong opinions and talking about them a lot (to be fair I have seen a lot of loudmouth, not-as-smart-as-they-think students who seem to use this tactic, and a reasonable amount of them win silent girlfriends with it, so maybe)? FAVOURITE IS FLAWLESS. I hear she does carriage commercials… in England. One time she met Byron, and he told her she was pretty. Byron’s almost too gay to function but whatever Vivelafizz (reply to Pilferingapples) Now you all have me going through some 1.3 posts myself, and wishing I’d started !clubbing earlier. If I had any inkling how, I’d suggest archiving everything on a more navigable site. Kingedmundsroyalmurder (reply to Vivelafizz' reply) I have in fact seriously considered trying to transfer all the club posts to a more permanent and more searchable site, but I don’t know of any. Anyone have any suggestions? Columbina (reply to Kingedmundsroyalmurder's reply) I have no suggestions, only wholehearted support. I remember daydreaming one day of collecting it all into a big PDF at the end and printing and binding it into the world’s biggest ever collection of varying-degrees-of-amateur literary criticism of Les Mis. Kingedmundsroyalmurder (reply to Columbina's reply) I know I’ve been saving all my original posts in a word doc, but that doesn’t help with the discussions. Getting the original posts would be easy enough, but a lot of the best stuff comes out in conversation and I’m not sure how to translate that to a different format.